>The technical folks at Google claimed the engineer was batshit crazy and was fooled by clever programming/algorithms. Spoiler alert, I agree with those folks

I agree too with this, what the developer did was also heavily edit the conversation to remove the illogical answers by the AI or ignore when the AI spoke of a nonexistent family it said it had at a non existent home.

In the end it was a developer that wanted the AI to be more than it was.

>The human brain is complex and thinks critically. AI can't think critically.

I do not know how you define critical thinking but the last point shows an AI model made by google that can reach logical conclusions on it's own.

It was told how some family relationships work on a family tree...and then the AI by itself made accurate linkings in the tree, as if it knew how to use critical thinking to reach a conclusion 2 members were related.

Still, this AI model is super new, and AI is the hottest tech right now.